OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I once played fairly well for about 5 years straight and I've had multiple 2 year downswings. Almost all of the things I ever achieved in tt happened in those 5 good years, even though I played for well over 20 years.

Keep in mind that I started when I was 10 years old, so it's different than someone starting at different times.

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Being very serious for one post, my mental reaction to that one peak day was really destructive. I knew at the time my true level was nowhere near that high. I was taking balls on the rise, seeing everything like slow motion, it was surreal.

But afterwards any day I didn't play at 2050 level, which was all of them, felt like failure. I was trying to play a certain way instead of just playing and getting a tiny bit better every week or month. And that made table tennis not fun.

Not enjoying table tennis messed up my life Bigly. I could only take it for eight months. Changing to short pimples was a desperation move to reset my attitude towards TT. Being 200 points worse with them at first was a small price to pay for being able to get better and have fun training again.

I used to be jealous of players who had huge ratings jumps while I plodded along increasing about 100 points a year. Now I don't envy them at all.

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Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... tHt04Kwcqb

https://www.omnipong.com/Results/1057/49/3-OSNGL.pdf

I got to the tournament about 20 minutes before it started. I had no one to warm up with and then a long pips player asks to warm up (and there was no one else to hit with). That was the kind of luck I had lol.

We had 3 groups of 6, top 2 advance into the next round. I got a good group in a sense, I knew all the players to some degree except the F player.

My first match was against the C player and he had a high level player to match coach him. Given that people were cheering him on, I had to get loud. I probably should have been loud the whole day lol. His coach said that I need to work on my backhand and that I get stuck in rallies when I serve backhand. He said my forehand and forehand serves are good and that I actually shouldn't be afraid to serve deep and rally if I keep the ball low and fast enough. He also said that my opponent had trouble keeping the ball short and that I need to develop to footwork to handle this because it was obvious that if he could have done so, the match could have gone quite differently.

My second match was against the F player, a somewhat underrated player who was a runner up in the U2000. I decided to go back to serving my basic backspin no spin change ups and wide forehand to the lefty serves to see whether he could handle those. For the most part he couldn't so I surprisingly was the only player in the group who beat him 3-0.

Then I got to the murderer's row of opponents. I got absolutely annihilated by the A player with my best shots getting smashed back at me without hesitation. It was a lesson that I guess I had to learn. He used medium pips on the backhand and had a serve for some reason I looped off the table with my backhand over and over again. In fact, I probably missed 6 serves in the first game or something silly before I noticed the camera wasn't recording.

I then played the B player who is actually a citizen of Brett's country. The match was more competitive in some ways that I expected and maybe if I had confidence and had played some points tighter, I might have made it a battle. But long serves and bad decisions at critical moments squandered two close games.

Then I played someone that people with good memories might be familiar with from big d's videos. Sloppy play, but a win is a win. He was watching his son play and seemed more focused on that match than on our match. Maybe he registered largely to be with his son lol.

Well I have an idea on what to work on. Maybe a backhand rubber equipment change or I have to play fuller loops with the backhand - the shove isn't getting me powerful action for some reason. And I think I just need to play faster and better players or train more versatile movements.

Comments welcome - the matches are listed in the order played.

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

After all the work, my backhand topspin vs backspin sucks royally in a match.... do I even know how to squat???

EDIT: MY backhand just sucks - I don't know how to do a backhand during a match - even vs topspin.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Laj, I've only watched game one of MAH04500 vs Asian black shirt guy match, and it was great. I'll slowly watch the rest of everything, but I have already made up my mind about a few things.

Your "footwork" on the forehand serve is completely wrong. I've told both you and Dan how it works and the message didn't work. Ironically, your opponent's serve is totally correct. Other than that, your play was completely awesome for one set/game.

Your forehand was looking amazing and your backhand was getting the job done in a decent way. It looked like a pro game to me, at a lower level. Your opponent probably had a junior career and does a lot of stuff "right". And you are out there matching it with him.

A junior career is an unfair advantage in tt, just like in language. If a kid starts learning English at the age of 9, he/she has a totally unfair advantage over the 35 yr old dad. No one expects the dad to ever catch the kid and we all understand this.

My point is this - despite your knees and inflammatory issues, you are out on the court looking great. Over the next few days, I'll watch more than one game up to 11 and I'm sure I'll see some good and bad. I'm just telling you what I saw after a few mins.

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Great post!

Expectations and comparisons are clearly deadly in tt and life.

Seeing everything in slow motion happens a lot to pros, and less to club players. It happens when you have mastered your shots and have confidence and belief in your abilities. It happens when you aren't too worried, or too bored. It happens when your brain can read the play early and you know it. It happens when the thinking part of your brain is mostly closed for business and you are just playing and having fun.

Here are a few things you'll notice.
- The world goes quiet and seems peaceful
- It's hard to think about random things because you are mostly your eyes and body.
- Your hands feel very dry and heavy
- You don't necessarily want your opponent to miss
- You are slightly annoyed when the game is finished
- Every song on the radio sounds good on the way home
- You feel like being around people, even if you are normally a hermit

Now visualize yourself playing in that state for 15 mins per day, for a couple of years.

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In mah4500 you won 75+% of your bh topspin rallies. Your bh receive push vs topspin serves was a disaster but blaming the rubber for that seems unproductive at best. Your perception appears to be out of touch with reality, and I think is crying out for a wilkinru deep dive.

Or maybe your bh sucked in the two losses, I'll watch those later.

Your definition of sucked seems to be "Does bot end the point with one shot."Which imo is not a reasonable expectation for the bh. Since you can clearly hit two or three bh topspins in a row, and most of your opponents can't, and neither can they redirect off the bh diagonal, why does playing bh rallies cause you such unhappiness?

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Mah4503 was just a bad match. Nothing was working. s*** happens.

If you want conclusions I could draw some, but with matches like this it's best to forget they ever happened.

And my conclusions would be about your tactics [SPOILER: not good] and those aren't welcome in this thread.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

MAH4505 The little boy is better. No shame in losing to a better player. You didn't play your best but he probably didn't either.

I have watched four of the matches now and I see what you need to work on. Your net ball game is garbage. I think you got three altogether and two were returned. Your opponents got 12 or 15 and won almost every point.

You should practice hitting the tape and dribbling over minimum four times a game, like I did to you and big d when we played at trolley. The kid looks like he would go on full tilt after six or seven nets. You should also either CHOLE!!! your nets at full volume, or say "Lucky meeee" in a singsong voice, if you really want to win. If you aren't willing to do what it takes to win, that's ok too.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

https://youtu.be/MoLHkIwMsyo?list=PL1xH ... wcqb&t=346

I'm desperately working on serve recovery myself. You were slow on this point. You are probably slow every time. I don't say this to be mean but it's something to work on that will help your results.

The other player here took the ball a little earlier than you are likely used to and forced a push from you. Not much point in practicing drills all day if you can't be ready to execute them after your own serve. One can almost chart serve recovery time and rating. It's pretty interesting, I've watched lots of matches from this point of view now and may actually make a video about it. I may call it 2020 RTTS01 - serve recovery.

FYI: My definition of being ready means being in a neutral position by the time the ball starts bouncing up on the other side of the table. This is the soonest time the receiver can touch the ball and the moment the server needs to start moving for the next shot.

I know BRS will enjoy this post.

I like your post wilkinru!

Even more exciting, both my aliexpress boondoggles cleared customs in the US of A! One is in ATL and the other is in New Jersey or smth.

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

I made a comprehensive video about this ETTS06. No need to do it again. https://ttedge.com/videos/etts06-execut ... e-recovery

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Your video is about how to do it - mine will be why you should fix it.

Everyone who saw that made fun of my tactics. But you can't teach an old dog new tricks in 1 month. This is going to be 3 month process if I am lucky.

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

For some reason I loop the ball low and fast but with too much arc to hit the net. And I push the ball high so it can get smashed in my face. I probably need to hit the top of the net more on all my shots by keeping the ball lower. Thanks for bringing this up. Now I need to figure out how to fix my right knee and stay lower while moving....

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus